"SCT" 2005 Obituary

SCTV o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-01-15 published
Earl CAMERON,
Broadcaster: 1915-2005
The man with the distinctive, rich voice and famously unflinching
face lent authority to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
in the early days of television broadcasting. Never a journalist,
'I just read the words'
By F.F. LANGAN,
Special to The Globe and Mail, Saturday, January
15, 2005 - Page S7
Toronto -- Earl
CAMERON used to tell the story of how he once
walked into a store and found a salesman staring at him.
"Fellow who reads the news on television looks just like you.
Ever watch him?"
"No," said Mr.
CAMERON, not telling a lie since he couldn't watch
himself while he was doing his job.
Early on, he discovered the strange kind of fame that comes with
appearing on television. Like the salesman, people thought they
knew him but weren't sure.
"People often look at me in the street. They want to say hello,
but aren't sure whether I'm somebody's brother or a guy they
met recently at a party."
Earl CAMERON was a classic Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
announcer, the voice of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's The
National, which, in the early part of his tenure from 1959 to
1966, was the only national television newscast in the country.
If Lorne GREENE was the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Voice
of Doom, then Earl
CAMERON was probably its voice from Mount
Olympus -- listened to and trusted by the viewers.
"If Earl said it, you knew it was true and that, even with all
the miseries, all was well with the world," said Knowlton
NASH,
who read The National long after Mr.
CAMERON.
"He was the last anchor who was part of the old school of broadcasting,"
said Mr. NASH from his winter home in Naples, Florida "No matter
how awful the news -- and he broadcast during the war -- he was
always a reassuring presence, giving the impression there were
better things ahead."
Mr. CAMERON will long be regarded as "the anchor's anchor" by
the corporation. "His skill and professionalism contributed greatly
to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's reputation for credibility,
objectivity and dependability in our newsgathering and broadcasting,
and in our role as Canada's national public broadcaster," said
Richard STURSBERG,
CanadianBroadcastingCorporation-television's
executive vice-president. "He was truly a legend."
All told, Mr.
CAMERON read more than 1,500 Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation newscasts. His audience believed that if Mr.
CAMERON
said something -- anything -- then it had to be true. One woman
went so far as to say, "he couldn't convince me that black is
white, but if he said it, then I would certainly give it some
thought."
Back in the days when news on television was a few talking heads
and too many words, Mr.
CAMERON appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation's 11 p.m. news broadcast and became a national institution.
He read the news from a script, not a teleprompter, and was famous
for his diction and flawless delivery.
His fans included those with an ear for perfectly spoken English.
In 1966, television columnist Dennis
BRAITHWAITE wrote in The
Globe and Mail that "I consider him a uniquely talented news
reader, the only one at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
who, in my hearing, has never made a mistake in phrasing or pronunciation."
Earl CAMERON was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan., during the
early months of the First World War. He inherited his magnificent
voice from his father, Ernest, who was described as having "one
of the finest undiscovered bass-baritones in North America" by
Sir Arthur Benjamin, the British composer who toured North America
judging choral contests.
The▼ elder Mr.
CAMERON wanted Earl to become a teacher like his
brother and two sisters. Earl did go to Saskatchewan Teachers
College, but soon decided the vocation wasn't for him. He liked
to tell a story of his brief career in the classroom. "I was
hired to teach in a little town called Kildare. This was during
the great Western drought of the '30s and it hadn't rained in
Kildare for a long time. My second day on the job there was a
downpour of 3½ inches. I figured I had done enough for the town,
so I left."
Perhaps it wasn't a great idea at the height of the Depression,
for he next found work shovelling coal for $18 a week. After
that, he worked on the railway for 25 cents an hour. His break
came when he heard of an audition for a summer job as an announcer
at CHAB, the local Moose Jaw radio station.
"I had about 70 others competing against me for an announcing
job. The whole public speaking class at the Young Men's Christian
Association," quipped Mr.
CAMERON, who had a droll sense of humour
despite his unflinching, stone-faced persona. His distinctive,
rumbling voice won him the job, and it quickly became permanent.
He soon moved to
CKY in Winnipeg and stayed there for four years.
The station was owned by the Manitoba Telephone Co. but, as it
happened, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also used the
staff and facilities there and Mr.
CAMERON quickly made a good
impression. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation promptly lured
him away and, in 1941, he arrived in Toronto. It wasn't long
until he was reading the National Radio News.
After television arrived, Mr.
CAMERON served as the backup for
Larry HENDERSON, who was the reader at 11 p.m. When Mr.
HENDERSON
quit in 1959, Mr.
CAMERON was given the job of reading the National
News.
For the next seven years, he was a familiar face, opening the
program with a nod of his head, a hint of a smile and a quiet
"good evening." It was a no-nonsense approach to a no-nonsense
subject, and both Mr.
CAMERON and the network liked it that way.
Then he got down to the serious stuff (commercials were not allowed
during the news) and he worked hard to avoid the slightest gesture
or change in inflection that might betray an emotion or a personal
opinion. If the program's editors provided him with a "kicker"
to end the newscast, he would permit himself an expression that
might suggest a chuckle.
He was the anchor, a term that didn't make it into the Oxford
English Dictionary until 1965, from 1959 to 1966. In many ways,
he was the last of a breed.
"Earl was devastated when they decided to go with a journalistic
anchor rather than a traditional broadcaster," says Larry
STOUT,
who was then a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news writer
and reporter. "He didn't think of himself as a journalist, but
rather as a broadcaster."
That got him into a bit of trouble. Like other announcers, he
was allowed to do commercial work. Mr.
CAMERON had two big clients
Crest toothpaste and Rambler, a car made by American Motors.
The toothpaste ads caused some complaints of bias -- by politicians,
among others -- and in 1965 Mr.
CAMERON was given a choice: no
more jobs doing ads if he wanted to keep his high-profile job
reading the 11 o'clock news.
In the end, he chose the news over toothpaste, but a year later
he was dumped anyway. Mr.
CAMERON's replacement as the main reader
on The National was Stanley
BURK/BURKE, who had worked as a foreign
correspondent. Mr.
CAMERON took over rotating duties that included
reading the early evening news that went across the country.
He also introduced the opinion program Viewpoint.
Earl CAMERON was always strictly a newsreader. He wasn't allowed
to change a comma of copy. It was a union regulation and not
one he minded. "I just read the words."
While his diction may have been perfect, he was wrong on the
direction that television news was taking. In 1967, he told the
Toronto Telegram, "I've heard that Huntley and Brinkley and Walter
Cronkite say that the era of the broadcast journalist is ending
and here the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is just trying
to start it."
The tradition at almost all television networks now is that the
main newsreader is not "just an announcer" but someone who has
advanced through the ranks as a reporter. The change did not
occur overnight. Stanley
BURK/BURKE quit and was replaced by announcers,
including Lloyd
ROBERTSON.
Peter KENT, a field reporter, read The National after Mr.
ROBERTSON
and he was followed by others of similar background. For all
that, Mr. CAMERON and Mr.
ROBERTSON were remembered as newsreaders
by the audience and by the comedy troupe
SCTV, which played on
their names in a running sketch that featured rival anchors Earl
Camembert and Floyd Robertson.
After Mr. CAMERON's demotion from his television job, he was
still one of two readers for The World at Six on Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation Radio. And he stayed on, introducing Viewpoint until
it was cancelled in January of 1976. A few months later, Mr.
CAMERON retired after 32 years -- and the world seen through
a Canadian television screen was never the same again. "He was
very, very Canadian," said Mr.
NASH. "As
Canadian as wheat."
Earl CAMERON was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan., on June 12,
1915. He died Thursday in Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie,
Ontario, after a lengthy illness. He was 89. He is survived by
his wife, Adelaide and son Harold. He was predeceased by his
son Clark, who died in a car accident in 1984. Funeral services
will be held on Saturday.

SCTV o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-11-21 published
Louis PITOSCIA,
Wrestler And Actor (1928-2005)
King-size regular on The Wayne and Shuster Show first used his
strength to deliver bananas around Toronto and then took up grappling.
Later, he switched to acting but was, in truth, 'hired for his
appearance. He didn't have to do anything. He'd just stand there'
By Danny GALLAGHER,
Special to The Globe and Mail, Monday, November
21, 2005, Page S11
Toronto -- Omnipresent, long cigars, fedoras, a booming voice,
a hulking mass, wrestling and The Wayne and Shuster Show -- that
was Louis PITOSCIA.
When his brother visited him in hospital in the waning days of
his life, the person Mr.
PITOSCIA most mentioned was Johnny Wayne.
Together with Frank Shuster he had appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation comedy show until 1990 and along the way had provided
a regular supporting roles for Mr.
PITOSCIA.
Before he got into wrestling and acting, Mr.
PITOSCIA was a blue-collar
worker who had been employed for many years in the banana-export
business with his brothers James and Tony and with their Italian-immigrant
father, Carmen. After school and on weekends, he would help sell
Central American bananas out of the family home in mid-town Toronto.
After he finished school, he delivered the fruit to stores throughout
the Toronto area. The business is still run by family members
today.
When wrestling beckoned, Mr.
PITOSCIA soon vacated the family
business. For a few years in the 1940s and 1950s, he relished
his new career and performed in such venues as Buffalo, Maple
Leaf Gardens in Toronto and other spots in North America.
"Lou wrestled mostly in preliminary matches, not main bouts,"
recalled Canadian wrestling legend Gene
KINISKI.
"Lou was a bad guy in the ring," his brother James
PITOSCIA said,
laughing.
"He took me a lot to his wrestling matches at Maple Leaf Gardens,"
his sister Lucy said. "He'd sit me in the front row all the time
and tell me, 'Now, don't you move from there.' He was a wonderful
guy. I miss him so much. He loved everybody and everybody loved
him. He was good to everybody -- especially the kids at his matches."
The bad-guy image in the ring was one he milked to the maximum
he also milked it in his career as an actor. With a 60-inch chest
and 48-inch waist, he was a big, burly man of 6-foot 2-inches
who reached close to 300 pounds in his heyday as a wrestler.
It was a weight he carried to the end of his life. A predilection
for long cigars and rum-and-coke drinks completed the picture.
The transition from wrestling to acting was a natural one because,
for him, wrestling was like acting. His interest in acting got
started in the early 1950s when American wrestler Mike Mazurki
jumped to Hollywood and invited Mr.
PITOSCIA along. Mr.
PITOSCIA
hung around California for only three weeks -- just long enough
to land a small role in the Bob Hope movie My Favourite Spy.
"I was sort of a hood in My Favourite Spy. I got killed," Mr.
PITOSCIA told the Toronto Star in 1960. "Anyhow, that experience
gave me confidence in my hidden talents."
As it happened, however, he had no interest in remaining in Hollywood
or in the U.S., for that matter. He wanted to stay in Canada
and earn his trade as a Canadian -- just like Johnny Wayne and
Frank Shuster.
"Lou was a great actor on the Wayne and Shuster Show," Mr.
KINISKI
said. "If the producers were looking for a fairly big role for
someone on the show, Lou pretty well had it sewn up. He had some
wonderful roles."
Mr. PITOSCIA's tenure with the Wayne and Shuster Show included
some appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show which required him to
go to New York for tapings.
"The time I was on The Ed Sullivan Show, I had to get knocked
through a lousy brick wall," Mr.
PITOSCIA told the Toronto Star.
"Out of my pay, they took 53 bucks, tax. Fifty-three bucks they
charge to let you fall through a crummy wall."
Fellow Wayne and Shuster regular Don Cullen hailed Mr.
PITOSCIA
as the "Great Wall of China" and recalled the episode in which
he had to lean his head on Big Lou's massive frame. "I'm a small
man and I looked ridiculous leaning on him."
To Tom Harvey, another Wayne and Shuster Show regular, Mr.
PITOSCIA
was not always the menacing type that he was cracked up to be.
"He was a big, tough guy outside but he was very soft inside.
He was a baby," Mr. Harvey said in an interview. "Not to be detrimental
in the theatrical sense, Lou was not really an actor. He was
hired for his appearance. He didn't have to do anything. He'd
just stand there. He was untheatrical in reading a line but he
was a funny, lovable guy."
Actor Alfie
SCOPP recalled a rather threatening experience during
which they taped an episode of the 1959 television series Royal
CanadianMountedPolice in Ottawa and Mr.
PITOSCIA took his role
and strength a little too seriously.
"I was the derelict bum with a drinking problem and Lou was the
muscle man for the mob," Mr.
SCOPP recalled. "The script called
for him to catch me and choke me. He was such a big man and he
wasn't just acting in this scene."
Mr. SCOPP said his air was cut off and he began to choke. "I
began to lose my grip on reality. The director finally noticed
what was happening and two guys had to pull Lou off me. He apologized
a lot to me afterward."
In 1990, Johnny Wayne died. The end of the Wayne and Shuster
Show signalled a drop in work for Mr.
PITOSCIA. He had just three
film roles in the 1990s, one in the feature film Baby on Board.
His last roles were as as Gato Ciccone in Snow on the Skeleton
Key (2003) and
as Calzino in Moss (2004).
Along the way, Mr.
PITOSCIA played roles such as a thug, gangster
and prisoner, when he wasn't involved in a side job in hotel
security in Toronto. He posted semi-regular appearances in a
number of television series, including Adderly, Robocop,
SCTV
Network 90 and Seeing Things. Perhaps his best-known movie was
Moonstruck, the popular 1987 film by Canadian director Norman
Jewison that starred Cher and Nicholas Cage. He was seen, too,
in a number of commercials, notably for Shell Oil Co. He also
made a United Way commercial -- as a wrestler.
Louis
(BigLou)
PITOSCIA was born November 11, 1928, in Toronto.
He died July 28, 2005, in Toronto of a lung ailment. He was 77.
He was buried with some of his favourite cigars. He is survived
by his brother James and sister Lucy.

SCTV o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-01-15 published
Earl CAMERON, 89, voice of the National
News anchor retired in 1976
Was announcer at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for 32 years
By Jim BAWDEN,
TelevisionColumnist,PageA18
Earl CAMERON was often called Canada's best-known anonymous man.
The onetime warehouse worker from Moose Jaw became Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation's "
Voice of Doom" when he replaced Lorne
GREENE on
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's national radio news in the
late 1940s and Larry
HENDERSON on The National in 1959.
CAMERON, 89, one of only seven men to anchor The National, died
Thursday in Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie after a lengthy
illness.
Over the years,
CAMERON's uncanny resemblance to the mythical
"man-in-the-street" Canadian made him a well-respected television
figure. Television critic Bob
BLACKBURN wrote in 1965: "
CAMERON
is not just the image of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news,
he is the cultivated image of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
itself: solid, patriarchal, Gibraltary!"
CAMERON took early retirement from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
in 1976, at age 61 and after 32 years with the corporation. Throughout
his Canadian Broadcasting Corporation career, he had always been
officially a staff announcer. He remained one of the regular
newsreaders on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio's The
World At Six but had become disappointed over his decreasing
role on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Television.
On his last day, he simply dropped off a note for his department
head and left for Florida. That was in keeping with a man who
was typically "quiet, not ostentatious" said CTV anchor Lloyd
ROBERTSON, who knew
CAMERON from his early days at Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation.
"I came to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1954 and we were
required to do it all. A typical day for Earl involved reading
weather on radio, then hosting a radio jazz show, doing station
breaks, too. At 9: 30 he'd stroll over to Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation News' studio to begin script rehearsals for The National,
which went live at 11 p.m. He had to do it all, and he did so
calmly, rarely making a mistake. We were required to memorize
the pronunciation of difficult names and foreign words, and Earl
made it all seem very natural."
Born in 1915,
CAMERON ran the gamut of business training and
normal school in his Moose Jaw hometown. Local radio station
CHAB hired him as a summer replacement at $20 a month.
CAMERON said in 1966 that,1" got the best advice ever from my
first boss. He explained to me I was reading for just one person.
He said to go into a house, and you'll find one person listening
to a radio. Try to talk to just this one person."
CAMERON later moved to Winnipeg radio station
CKY for a year,
and in 1944 joined Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio in
Toronto, from which he rose to top anchor status.
In 1965 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation executives began publicly
grumbling that
CAMERON was doing too many outside commercials.
His association with Rambler cars and Crest toothpaste, though
allowed by the union contract, was unseemly for the voice of
The National, they said. Under intense pressure, he ended his
lucrative contracts.
His television star went into eclipse the next year, when he
was replaced as headliner of The National by Stanley
BURK/BURKE.
There▲ was never any doubt about
CAMERON's announcing abilities
his reading was impeccable, but it was the system that was at
issue. He was dropped in an effort to break the union jurisdiction
which dictated that newsmen could write the scripts but announcers
could only read it on air.
Television critic Dennis
BRAITHWAITE wrote at the time: "The
national news didn't make Earl
CAMERON. He made the national
news."
CAMERON did not mention his departure on air. For his last broadcast
as announcer he simply said, "Now this is Earl
CAMERON, saying
goodnight for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Television News."
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation offered him a job as host of
the public affairs series Viewpoint, reading viewers' letters,
but that show was canned in 1976 after an 18-year run.
Retired, CAMERON moved his family to LeFroy, on Lake Simcoe.
He did commercials for American Motors and Krona margarine, golfed
daily and watched Global's 6 p.m. news.
His retirement didn't stop
SCTV from satirizing him and Lloyd
ROBERTSON as duelling, argumentative anchors Earl Camembert and
FloydRobertson in skits
CAMERON liked because "in this business
a little publicity always helps."
CAMERON leaves his wife, Patty; son, Hal; and three grandchildren.